Storm turns Dongan Hills birthday party into bash

Gaetano Maugeri's 50th birthday party was in full swing in his Dongan Hills backyard at around 4:30 Saturday afternoon, when the sky suddenly turned dark and rain came pouring down. The party guests rushed to move all the food into the yard's screen house so the party could continue somewhere dry.

About 10 minutes later, the same guests were running frantically out of the screen house after a large tree branch fell on top of it, bringing down part of the roof and causing the entire structure to buckle.

Miraculously, nobody was hurt.

"I heard a crackling sound. It sounded like fire," said Denise Hazen of Midland Beach, a family friend who was in the screen house when the tree hit.

"We ran for our lives," Ms. Hazen said.
Maugeri, a retired sergeant with the Army National Guard who returned from Iraq in November 2005, said among the 10 to 15 people in the screen house at the time were his parents. His 70-year-old mother was hit by a pole, but was not injured.

"We're lucky everybody got out alive," he said.

After running into the house and calming down, the family carefully went into the screen house and brought the food back inside their home, where the party continued despite the scare.

The tree is on a neighbor's property, whose yard was not damaged. Parts of the large, leafy branch landed in two adjacent yards, which were empty at the time. The Maugeri family is waiting to hear from their neighbor's insurance company about replacing the screen house, which was only a year and a half old, and removing the tree.

Despite the wrecked screen house, a damaged fence and the expensive prospect of cleaning up their yard, everyone at the Maugeri home remained in good spirits this afternoon.